


Crystal Tears

by Lycaon Shadowhunter (TachyonStar)



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: ARR spoilers, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:09:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TachyonStar/pseuds/Lycaon%20Shadowhunter
Summary: The Warrior reminisces on what she's lost after the events surrounding the Crystal Tower.
Kudos: 1





	Crystal Tears

**Author's Note:**

> Oh god I've started writing for my alt too. Will this madness never end.
> 
> *ahem*
> 
> I would like you all to meet Sechen Urumet, who is a smol Xaela astrologian, over a hundred years old (but looks about fifteen), can fuck with time (hence her advanced age but young body), and has a tendency to adopt people. She's awesome, really.
> 
> Spoilers for the Crystal Tower arc in ARR, if there's actually anyone who doesn't know about that yet.

How many years has it been since last I shed tears? I cannot remember.

It is a certainty, though, that the last time, I was very young and had not yet awakened to the true scope of my own power. Not even thirty-five summers of age, laying on what I and all around me were certain was my deathbed - yes, that is the last memory I have of such an occurrence, and in the span since I have passed over a second lifetime and entered into a third. Long has it been, and that is something I can find no complaint with.

And yet...this day...

I was still only small when I was taught a most important lesson, and to this day I carry it with me; ‘tis always the people you come to care about the most that can hurt you the most profoundly. I have never felt it right to withdraw all affection from others, even in light of that, yet there remain very few overall upon whom I would bestow an unfettered love - whether that of a mother to her dearest child, a cherished sister, or even a lover to the one who has fought well to take the key to her heart. Those few are most unusual indeed, and perhaps it is lucky that I do not often encounter the like.

I suppose I...remain most perplexed as to why I have done so now, but it matters not.

He was dear to me, very dear, even only in the short time that we knew one another. A brilliant existence in a bleak and struggling world, relentless in the face of adversity, strong of will and most kind of heart - perhaps I am merely a sentimental old woman, yet he reminded me so very much of my own youthful self that I could do nothing but take him under my wing, like I did for so many children back when still I remained in Sharlayan. He was willing enough; he came to call me "mother", he gladly accepted my guidance and my comfort, and had events proceeded any differently, then we may well have existed as family for a long time to come. But alas, ‘twas not to be, and even though I came to know this before it should even happen, I could not bring myself to hurt him.

Nay, ‘twas my own self that should be the one hurt - I have survived many such agonies in all my years.

I did not expect this one to be different.

Many children have left me, whether from illness, calamity, or simply spreading their own figurative wings and striking out on their own; I have mourned them all, ‘tis true, but not a one has struck me so deeply in all the years I have lived. That bright, steadfast, strong-willed boy - ah, he was, and is, so different from all of the others, and I imagine that is the reason why I feel so strongly as I do. Would that there could have been some way to change the course of events...but though I wish it, I know deep in my heart I would never have tried to sway him from his course, even had I a mind to. He understood well the grave weight of the fate he had undertaken, and it only strengthened his will, only made him all the more determined to do what must needs be done...for not his own sake, but for the sake of all.

For the sake of all...that was the selfsame creed that I lived by in my youth. Most shamefully, I had all but forgotten it until this day.

Perhaps that is why he came into my life; to remind me of what I must never lose sight of, and to restore a piece of me that mourns with all the ferocity I thought I had long ceased to feel.

Today, for the first time in countless years...I remembered how to cry, and I cried for the child I have lost.


End file.
